You’ve probably been wearing prints your entire life – remember that polka dot onesie you wore when you were merely days old? Prints are simply a part of wearing clothes. But what you probably didn’t know, is that many of them carry a long and storied history. Click through the gallery above to see what spots, a popular dance and the Miss America have to do with one another

New Orleans has always been a site of healing — even before the French Mississippi Company officially founded the Louisiana city in 1718. 1300 years before Europeans colonized the swampy land, the Mississippi culture, a mound-building Native American civilization, thrived in the bayou, using the herbs of the land for healing rituals linked to the cycles of agriculture. After les Français and los Españoles moved in with their European-trained pharmacists and brought in African slaves who had their own medicinal traditions, Louisiana’s apothecary heritage became as creole as its music, cuisine, and language.